At least she’d got her job back. She had telephoned Caroline and had a brief and uncomfortable conversation. Her mentor and employer had diplomatically agreed not to quiz her about the reasons for the end of her brief marriage and Lucy had gone back to work as a waitress. The jobs were busy and distracting—which was probably a good thing—and she tried her best to pin on her brightest smile, hoping it would conceal the pain of missing the family life she’d so nearly become a part of.
One night she put on her pale green uniform and went to work at a large house outside the town, handing out canapés to the guests of a local landowner whose daughter had just got engaged. The whole affair seemed destined to mock Lucy, from the moment she was diverted to enter the house via the back door and told to tidy up her hair, to someone impatiently dismissing her and her tray, as if she were a large fly who had just landed on a piece of sushi and started laying eggs. She’d forgotten how patronising the rich could be, when you were in a position of domestic servitude. The newly engaged woman was flashing her massive and rather vulgar ring and, stupidly, Lucy found herself thinking about the discreet ink-spot sapphire which was tucked away at home with Drakon’s discarded wedding band, which she had snatched up before leaving the restaurant, and wondering whether she ought to send both back to her estranged husband.
The moon was high in the sky by the time she left the party and, although transport home was included, Lucy had no desire to sit on a steamy and overcrowded minibus, especially as she was always the last one to be dropped off. Despite the ever-present drizzle, she set off to walk along the familiar roads and lanes, pausing briefly by a small footbridge, to watch the dark gleam of the water as it flowed ben
eath her. Because the river never changed, she thought gloomily. It had been the same all through her life and would be the same once she was dead and gone.
An unfamiliar sense of melancholy washed over her as she brushed past a low-hanging branch of wet leaves on the final approach to her cottage and tiny droplets of water showered over her. And then she nearly jumped out of her skin as a large figure loomed out of the darkness, her instinctive fear quickly replaced by an intense feeling of longing as she identified the late-night intruder.
Drakon.
Drakon Konstantinou, in all his towering and muscular beauty. Her heart twisted with pain and regret, but indignation was a far healthier reaction and that was the one she clung onto. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, jumping out of the shadows like that?’ she demanded. ‘You gave me a fright.’
‘And what are you doing walking back alone at this time of night?’ he returned furiously. ‘Anything could have happened to you!’
‘I can’t think of any fate worse than my former husband turning up unannounced like this!’ she retorted. ‘What are you doing here, Drakon—have you come to gloat?’
Despite the darkness of the night, Drakon could see the fury spitting from his wife’s eyes and his heart sank. Because this wasn’t what he had planned. He’d thought she’d be home and he’d be able to talk his way into the cosy comfort of her small cottage within minutes. But the place had been in darkness and he’d been walking up and down this damned riverbank for hours, his tortured mind conjuring up pictures of where she might be, especially since her phone had been switched to silent and she hadn’t bothered to return any of the calls he’d been making all evening.
Yet could he blame her for being so angry?
No, he could not.
Rarely in his life had he been forced to admit that someone else had the higher moral ground, but he did so now, repeating the same words he’d used when he’d turned up on this very same spot a few months back, asking her to marry him.
‘Can I come in?’
‘No, you can’t. Contact me through my lawyer.’
He frowned. ‘Have you got a lawyer?’
‘Not yet. But I will. At least I suppose I will—isn’t that what people do when they’re going through a divorce?’
‘I don’t know, Lucy, because I’ve never been married before and I don’t want a divorce.’
‘Well, I do! I can’t think of anything worse than—’ She stopped abruptly, as if his words had only just sunk in, and eyed him suspiciously. ‘What do you mean, you don’t want a divorce?’
‘There’s no qualifier to that statement,’ he said drily. ‘I just don’t.’
‘Well, I do.’
He sucked in a deep breath as he read the defiance on her shadowed face. ‘We can’t have this conversation on the doorstep.’
‘We seem to be managing perfectly well, so far.’
‘Open the door and let’s go inside, Lucy,’ he said gently. ‘Your hair’s all wet.’
Lucy wanted to shout at him. To tell him not to adopt that silky tone which made her think of all the times he’d cradled her after they’d made love and made her feel so cherished and protected and wanted. Because all that stuff had been an illusion. It had withered and died at the first test, hadn’t it?
Yet she recognised it would be immature to send him away when he had come all this way to see her. They needed to deal with this situation like adults. He probably wanted her to promise not to give her side of the story to the press—as if she would dream of hanging out all her heartache for the world to see. And besides... She glanced nervously at the look of determination which was making his jutting jaw look so formidable. She swallowed. He didn’t look anything like a man who would accept being turned away.
‘Oh, very well,’ she said crossly. ‘But this had better not take long.’
She made him wait while she lit a couple of lamps and put a match to the fire because the temperature in the room was positively arctic. Then she took off her comfy black work shoes and shot him an acid look as she lined them up next to the others in the hallway. ‘I’m assuming you won’t be spiriting away any of my shoes this time?’ she questioned sarcastically.
But he didn’t rise to the bait. Instead he walked over to the window and stared outside, his head bent and shoulders suddenly hunched, like a worn-out fist-fighter on the brink of defeat who was about to make one last stab at victory. ‘I just want to say that I’m sorry, Lucy,’ he said, and when he turned round Lucy was shocked by the ravaged expression she could read on his rugged features.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said woodenly.